Identifying admixture and genetic ancestry in human populations via genetic drift pattern

Admixture and genetic ancestry in human populations

Abstract

Progressing technologies have led to the development of numerous methods to analyze the emergent pool of modern and ancient genetic data that decode the pieces of information hidden inside the genome. This can reveal different facets of the demographic history of not just the human populations but other organisms too. However, these methods are so different in their approaches that they can be applied in numerous ways to comprehend the human past at a deeper level. Considering the diversity and versatility in approaches, here I review a set of broadly used methods that follow a specific approach to identify and explain the admixture events, the singular or multiple mixing between two genetically distinct populations. Particularly, I give an overview of the key methods to explicitly detect and quantify admixture by the measure of relative genetic drift observed in populations analyzing genome-wide data, especially focusing on autosomal SNP markers. These methods may not cover the whole picture of human population history; nevertheless, they have significantly transformed our perception about human evolution by unveiling the complexity of the demographic history of human populations to a great deal.